‘Am I right, ladies?’: A clip of Saoirse Ronan ‘gagging men’ is being applauded by women
A clip of Saoirse Ronan on The Graham Norton Show has gone viral after people applauded what the actress had to say. She threw a sobering comment into a jokey conversation between men, and people—especially women—loved it.
Ronan was on The Graham Norton Show on October 25 to promote Blitz, her new World War II-set drama about a young boy and his mother. Alongside her were Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal, promoting Gladiator II, and Eddie Redmayne, promoting The Day of the Jackal. It was an all-male panel apart from Ronan, and it was after the conversation turned to The Day of the Jackal that the men said something that accidentally showed their male privilege.
Redmayne talked about how he trained for the miniseries and mentioned how he learned some self-defense. One of the techniques he was taught was, “how you can use your phone if someone’s attacking you.” The idea is to slam the phone into the attacker’s neck. The men on the show all found this very funny for some reason, and Ronan tried to say something but her voice was lost among the jokes. Mescal said, “Who is actually going to think about that? If someone actually attacked me, I’m not going to go ‘phone!'” and gestured as if he was using his phone as a weapon.
Ronan then threw a very valid metaphorical bucket of cold water over the proceedings. She said, “That’s what girls have to think about all the time.” This caused all the men to fall silent. Ronan gestured to herself and said “Am I right, ladies?” while the audience applauded. Graham Norton changed the subject, and the matter wasn’t discussed again.
The moment went viral because it’s such a perfect demonstration of male vs. female privilege. The men thought the self-defense technique was silly and joked about it, but for a woman, it could be a literal matter of life and death. Ronan was serious as she brought a stop to the joke and people were very impressed with her.
The men on the show didn’t stop to consider their male privilege. Hopefully, Ronan’s words will stick with them, and they may start thinking about it a little more. More of this kind of honesty on talk shows, please!
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